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I actually wish I wasn’t telling you there is such thing as too nice of a rental property because it might mean that I’m not experiencing this first-hand as we speak but, unfortunately, I know for certain that it is possible to have too nice of a rental property! I have one now and it’s not looking pretty. Not the house, it’s actually too pretty, but the situation.

I can’t find renters!

Would you believe it? At first I wanted to second-guess my property manager but I’ve been working with him forever and I know he’s not the problem. The problem is: the house is too nice. It’s newer (2007), big size as far as how rentals usually go (2100 ft2), 4 bedrooms/3 bathrooms, and it is in an amazing location south of Atlanta. The location is great because it’s only a mile off the main freeway and half a mile from a lot of major commercial shops and restaurants, but you’d never know any of that stuff was there if you were standing outside the front door. It’s a very quiet, wooded, cute little neighborhood, and I’d say it qualifies as primarily upper middle-class. It’s not quite to the full designation of upper middle-class in my opinion, but it’s not far from it. All of this about the location was a lot of what had me filled with excitement when I was looking at it. Atlanta was starting to appreciate at the time, I knew there was a lot of appreciation to be had in the market itself, and if any property in particular had a lot of room to build equity, it was this one. On top of that, the monthly cash flow was scheduled to be amazing. I bought the house for $94,500 and it was rented out at $1300/month with low taxes and insurance, plus it was fully rehabbed and in amazing condition so it was doubtful there’d be any major repair expenses anytime soon. So the cash flow was great, the property had so much appreciation potential, and it was just a stinkin’ cute house.

Yeah, well…

At first when the tenants who were living there when I bought the house stopped paying and were eventually evicted, I thought it was a fluke. Then the property manager (who was a different manager than who has the house now) put in a second set of tenants (like 4-5 months later, which was already causing me stress in itself), I was super excited because they even paid an extra month’s rent upfront and everything seemed to be great. Sure enough though, they stopped paying too. It was a repeat all over again of the first set of tenants. Because this was a property manager I hadn’t used before, I had every bit of faith in the fact that obviously this manager was horrible. He clearly couldn’t screen tenants and I know for sure he was giving them too much leeway to be able to pay late and try to make up missed payments. That part I should have nipped in the bud immediately, but in general I just knew it had to be this guy. So, before the second set of tenants were even out of the house, I fired that property manager and reassigned the property to my usual PM. I knew he could fix the situation as he had always been amazing in the past and was doing a great job with my other properties. I was so excited to have him take over the property so now it could reach its full investment potential.

That was last September. It is now April (and this is no April fool’s joke) and there are still no tenants in the house.

At first I understood there is always a little lag time, it seems like, once a property is marketed to really get traction of people looking at it and from those people, sorting out the good ones. So there was some lag time. Well that lag time put us into the beginning of the holiday season, and if you have ever owned a rental property, you know holiday season is a horrible time to find tenants. I mean, who looks for new places to live at Christmas? Not many people. So there was the holiday time. As we started coming out of the holidays, I got excited thinking it was time for a tenant. I wasn’t hearing anything, so I asked. There had been a few calls, but that was it. I was confused as to why this would be the case. Other than the house I used to live in that I now rent out, this house is the nicest rental property I own! What in the world? I gave it another week or two and asked again. They had gotten two applications. One woman seemed good but when the PM started requesting documents to move forward, she wouldn’t answer the phone. I’m always of the mindset that how things end are the same way they begin, so I was totally against this woman moving in even if she did suddenly pick up the phone a week later. No idea what ever happened to her. The other application was for a section 8 tenant, which normally I’d be fine with, but apparently this one had six children under the age of, something young, and didn’t have a fantastic background. Nix. That was the end of the application traffic. Now it was March. I had talked to my PM on and off during all this, but at this point we finally had to really sit down at length and figure this one out. Just to be clear, the PM is great. I’ve never thought twice that he wasn’t looking for tenants in the right places, advertising, or anything like that. He’s done amazing with my other properties so I had no doubt something different was going on with this one.

My PM told me specifically, “one problem is everyone who lives in this area and the closest neighborhoods nearby are home owners, not renters.” As much as I always encourage people to buy rentals in neighborhoods that do have owner occupants (helps with tenant quality, appreciation potential, and general enjoyment), I had picked a property that went too far to that end of the spectrum. Fantastic. But seriously, no interest? So we talked about getting more diligent about advertising it on rent-to-own websites and putting tenants under a lease option to buy if that would help drift more towards the owner occupant-desiring crowd. At this point I even had my PM run some comps and decide what he thought the property could go for, considering the 20%+ appreciation in Atlanta over the last few years, I figured it would have to sell for something decent. The comps didn’t seem to support it (have I ever mentioned shooting for appreciation is like looking in a crystal ball?). Great! I was at a loss.

Ironically enough, a couple weeks after my PM listed the property for sale just to see what happened, he received a cash offer to buy the property for $130,000. This amount was what I had initially set as my minimum price I’d be willing to sell it for, since I had bought it for $94,500 and needed to profit after all financing costs, interest, and hello mega vacancies. I agreed to the offer, signed it, and the property is in escrow now as we speak. I have my hesitations as to whether the property will make it to close or not because of the unsupportive comps, but who am I to criticize a cash offer. The property is still listed on rental sites as well to see what happens on that front, if anything. So far, still nothing.

Comments

What an experience you had. Thanks for sharing I enjoyed reading it a lot. I also learned a few do’s and don’ts. Finding tenants are really difficult, especially finding good ones, there are times that you have the perfect property but no one seems to want it. I’m still researching why that happens and I actually find your experience illuminating. Location is a primary reason. Thanks again for sharing and I hope you find a buyer soon.